Notes: Inevitably, for this one I resorted to a secret wedding and eloping afterwards. The next drabble will be a follow-up to this one, since there's only so much you can do with a specific wordcount.
Day Four: cloaking | steal me | the long night. 500 words.
Jon stared at the heavy piece of cloth laid out on the bed in front of him, for the first time today managing to focus on anything but the all-encompassing anxiety that had taken over him. Quite an achievement considering the circumstances, but then again, he had hoped for that exact result – that the ceremony they had decided on would be enough to make them both forget about everything else at least for as long as it lasted. So far, the plan seemed exceptionally effective.
It was breathtaking, the intricate lines of white and grey enough to make up for – and almost entirely mask – the lack of a house sigil. Sansa had offered to make it herself (had even offered to put the direwolf on it but it didn't feel right; not when he was taking her away from her family instead of vowing to protect her under its name), and he had protested whenever she had mentioned it – with everything she was risking for this, the least he could do was arrange for someone else to sew her bridal cloak.
This day had been months in the planning. They had both done things to get here that they would have never considered before – just yesterday, Sansa had taken the majority of her possessions out of Winterfell along with enough gold to last them for a while before they managed to make things work on their own – but it had been worth it and now, as Jon prepared to make that last step, he was as convinced of that as he would ever get.
It wouldn't go the way that Northern marriages usually did. If that had been the case, they would have never needed a cloak; wouldn't have memorised the oaths that the Faith of the Seven demanded. But they had no witness they could rely on for a real wedding, and no way of officiating it just because of that, so they'd opted for one of the few septons living in the North instead. It was all that needed to be done for them to be able to defend the validity of their marriage if it ever came to that, and their father—
Their father. Gods, what were they thinking? It was already a miracle that no one had found out about them after all those years; had they really come so far as to assume that that meant they could leave everything – their home and the only family they had ever known – behind? The thought alone was enough to make Jon's head spin.
"Are you ready to go?"
He spun on his heel and suddenly, the sight of Sansa in her bridal gown – one he hadn't seen before, white streaked with silver – was the only encouragement he really needed.
"Yes." He would do anything to keep her – this – safe, would face any danger that they could come across, and he'd said so countless times already; it was about time he made good on his word. "I am."